Using our "brains" today

I can't believe we are finished with our second week of preschool, but we all seem to feel comfortable with each other and having a good time together.  I keep the bag of blocks on the floor of the preschool room, and that is the first thing the kids wanted to do this morning, so we discussed how we sing the song about the wise man and the foolish man in primary.  Why do you ask??  Well, everything needs to have a good foundation and I showed them how they needed to have a good solid foundation for our "castle" so that it would not fall down easily.  Then we proceeded to make a good sized circle with the bigger, heavier blocks and then we had our foundation and they could build the castle up.  Pretty soon we had all the kids involved and it turned out to be a really  fun activity for all of us.

When our castle was complete, it was time for our morning activities.  We had our pledge, repeated John 3:16, moved over to the calendar, the weather, and then once again we sang our alphabet song and Cooper and Avery took turns pointing to the letters in order for us to associate verbally as well as by sight.

We are beginning to learn about our bodies and this will be the pattern we will add parts to, as we learn body parts, functions and purpose.

Today the children pasted the brain on to the body and they told me where the brain is located.  Then we discussed the many things that the brain is responsible for in keeping our bodies moving.

The first activity we did was: I placed 6 items on a tray and had them identify each item, then I  put a cloth over the items and removed one item and had them guess what was missing.  Then removed two items, added a few more, removed more, etc showing them that our brain helps with our memories.

We will be adding sight words to their word boxes now and so I asked each one what was a word he or she wanted to put into their box.  Cooper chose the word "see" and Brooklyn wanted a rhyming word, so she chose "bee"  Brig chose "dad', Sam chose "mom" Ivy chose "ivy" (which we decided was a good one because it also meant a crawling vine.  Then Avery chose a rhyming word for "dad" and that was "fad" so we discussed what that word meant.  Then we decided that we would all add "dad" to our boxes and so we repeated them several times, got our boxes and put them into them as our learning begins.  so, please go over these words .

We then noticed it was time for snacks and Sammy's mom brought strawberries, and cookies for our snack today.

While we were at the table, I took this opportunity to discuss how important it is to take care of our bodies, in this case our heads.  We decided it was a good thing to always wear our helmets when we rode a bike or scooter.  I placed a soft dish towel on the table, took an egg, and dropped it.  Nothing happened to the egg and they told me it was because the cloth was soft.  Then I dropped the egg on a paper towel on the table.  The egg broke!  We discussed the reason and what was the result.

Fun time in the basement and exploring new things.  Brig walked on the pathway (roads) we made last week and Ivy and Brook were our viking chiefs today. 

At the end of our day we read two books, chosen by the children.  The first was "There was an old woman who swallowed a bell"  and that was interesting the things that she swallowed!!  Then there was "My World" and how many times was My read.  The question sticks helped us to find out more about the books and we had some very interesting remarks.

There is always excitement when a mother or father sees just what kind of work their child is doing.  When I presented this activity today, I put my example paper on a cookie sheet and attached it with magnets. I showed the children how magnets worked and they are anxious to work with magnets again.  Anyhow, I try to go step by step with the kids to have them learn how to follow directions.  When I looked at how they followed instructions, Sammy, who is the youngest in the class really amazed me at how well he was able to do. (And his mother was impressed, too!!)
Way to go, kids, another good day in preschool!